Chapter 93: The Misaligned Tale of Science and Technology for National Renewal, Part 8

Upon hearing those words, Mu Yin suddenly understood. Her memory came rushing back all at once, yet even as she looked at Chi Shen, the friend who had once fought beside her, her heart still ached terribly.

“Yes,” she said. “We agreed on that back then. But you lied to me.”

In that final battle, they had fought those vermin with the resolve to die, determined not to let them escape. But those creatures had already achieved their objective; why would they remain and be buried with them? So apart from a few expendable pawns, the rest had all fled.

Their counterattack had been utterly pointless. Yet at the time, aside from madly dragging those vermin down with them, there seemed to be nothing else any of them could do. All of humanity perished together with those vermin, and Mu Yin, at the very last moment, was saved by Chi Shen.

“Your power is special. You’re the one who can survive,” Chi Shen had said to her before leaving her those words and going away. In the end, Mu Yin alone remained in that world, and she did survive.

“What are you talking about?” Chi Shen looked at her in bafflement.

“You were a great liar,” Mu Yin said, wiping away her tears with a smile, “but I did it. Everyone will live well.”

She would return, wipe out those vermin, then change the conditions of Blue Star so that everyone could live happily on a better Blue Star before stepping out into the endless sea of stars.

At that moment, Chi Shen’s expression changed too. “All right. We’ll wait for you.”

Then the surroundings shifted abruptly, and Mu Yin realized she was standing right beside a flight of steps, almost about to tumble off them.

Her mouth twitched. Looking around, she saw that the others had already nearly reached the summit, while some people, like her, were still scattered across the latter third of the climb with different expressions on their faces. So Mu Yin continued upward, and this time she did not see any more illusions.

After she finally reached the top, she discovered that this was not the highest point at all. In fact, it felt more like the sect’s central square. The summit had been flattened into a broad area, large enough to cover about ten football fields. There was only one building here, and it did not seem to be the main hall, but rather a guest hall.

There, they underwent another round of testing, after which they were assigned positions. Naturally, those with mixed spiritual roots still had no place in any of it. After the examination, they were taken away first and sent to the servant quarters.

It was not far away, just at the foot of the mountain on the back side. There was a fairly large valley plain there, built up into rows of houses that formed the village where the servants lived. It was said that there were several such villages within the sect, each responsible for a different main peak.

“This is your access token. Find yourselves a house. Tomorrow, you will be issued your identity tokens and your assignments. After completing your tasks, you may go to the Hall of Letters to study and learn. If you can read already, you may go directly to the Hall of Instruction to begin with the basics of cultivation.”

The palaces are all over there on the side peaks, in the two largest buildings in the village.

The servant steward who had led them there was a Foundation Establishment cultivator who looked to be well over fifty. He seemed to have reached the end of his path and had not entered the outer sect, choosing instead to remain in the servant village as a steward.

After explaining the local arrangements, he went on: “Each servant disciple receives one hundred and twenty low-grade spirit stones, one bottle of low-grade Qi-Gathering Pills, and one bottle of Grain-Repelling Pills per year. Since cultivators may seclude themselves for years at a time without noticing how the days pass, our sect distributes these once a year. Tomorrow, after you receive your identity tokens, you can go to the Hall of Service to collect your annual allotment.”

After finishing his explanation, he dismissed them to find their own houses. The cultivation world was even more sparsely populated than the ancient mortal realm. Even servants were given a small private courtyard apiece, though friends and relatives could choose a larger one together. Small as a sparrow, it still contained all the necessary organs: there was a public dining hall, and anyone who had not yet reached the stage of fasting could go there for meals.

Mu Yin and Cao Li-hua chose a slightly larger courtyard and lived together. The spiritual energy within the sect was denser than outside. Though it certainly could not compare with the main peaks, it was still twice as rich as the world beyond. All in all, this world should be in a period of flourishing spiritual energy.

She had once mentioned that the world moved in cycles, the breathing of the Source Core. When it exhaled, spiritual energy filled the world; when it inhaled, the energy would gradually diminish. At the same time, that was also when the Source Core drew in energy from the outside, from beyond the world itself, even absorbing some of the energy within its own body.

By the time of the next exhale, it had already grown a little. The breathing of the Source Core was an immensely long process: one breath was equivalent to an entire age, ranging from countless tens of millions to immeasurable eons. The Source Core could grow, and each breath was growth.

The relationship between the world and the Source Core was like that between a cell and its nucleus. Neither could exist without the other. Once one was lost, the other would stop growing and might even be destroyed. And within that system, sentient life in the world occupied the place of the other elements inside a cell. If something went wrong with sentient life, it would likewise affect the entire cell and its nucleus. That was why those vermin had chosen to strike at humans and other intelligent beings.

Clearly, this world was in its exhalation phase, which was why spiritual energy was so abundant. However, this was only a level-four world. She could not help wondering what the higher-level worlds were like.

After resting for the night, Mu Yin and Cao Li-hua went together to the Hall of Service the next day to collect their identity tokens and first-year allowances. It was only then that Mu Yin learned Cao Li-hua’s full name.

They also received their first year’s tasks. The work was not heavy, because the first year was meant to be a period of adjustment during which they could study writing and cultivation methods. Starting in the second year, things would not be so easy.

Mu Yin could read, and over the past three years Cao Li-hua had been learning alongside her, so she did not need to learn from scratch. Still, she went to sit through several classes first, since she could not be certain whether the script used in the cultivation world was the same as the one she had learned in the mortal realm. Fortunately, she discovered that the writing system here was different from the one she already knew, so during those three years she had specifically studied the local script.

In truth, Chinese characters were still Chinese characters, but as civilization developed along different paths, different script styles emerged as well: oracle bone script, bronze inscriptions, large seal script, small seal script, and so on. They were all the same characters, yet their strokes and structures were entirely different, revealing only the pattern of their evolution. Naturally, other worlds would have their own differences too.

Of course, the origins of Chinese characters were basically pictographs, but different races seemed to express pictographic writing in very different ways, and from that came many forms of writing. In the end, however, only two scripts remained as the major representatives: Chinese characters and the Latin alphabet.

After attending a few classes, Mu Yin felt fortunate. She was glad she had worried about possible mistakes and come to listen to a few lessons in advance; otherwise, she would have missed some important knowledge. The cultural courses taught to cultivators were not limited to writing alone, but also included some history of the cultivation world.